The researcher team includes Dr. Jeffrey Short, a veteran of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who has studied the Exxon Valdez oil spill extensively. That spill is thought to have killed around 300,000 sea birds.

A Coastal Scavenger Hunt

In the months after the Gulf disaster roughly 2,000 visibly oiled sea birds were found. The Gulf Coast is more than 4,000 miles long, and factors such as decomposition, scavenging sharks, wind and currents, and the controlled burns of oil all ensured that many oil-slicked bodies were lost or swept out to sea before they could be counted. For their first model, the team calculated losses based off of these and other factors such as the speed a bird’s carcass might drift.

The second model relies on what we know of the pre-spill population of sea birds. Population size, landing behaviors, and the length of time spent in potentially oiled water were all considered by Dr. Short and his colleagues. The possibility of fatal damage was then multiplied, giving a grim figure that matched up with the first model’s predictions.

Conservative Estimate

While these estimates are staggering, ornithologist Melanie Driscoll of the Audubon Society said “This is a really big number, and it’s still too small.”

Driscoll and others fear the real tally is much higher because the study did not include birds that live in the more than 2,000 miles of marshes affected by the spill or at birds that would have been found further away from the coast. Added together and the science indicates the final tally of dead birds could easily top a million.

A Telling Absence

BP has already criticized this figure and attacked the credibility of the researchers. Yet some birds’ absences from their usual habitats are telling. Dr. Short and his team’s modeling estimates that populations of the laughing gull in the northern gulf would have declined by almost 40%. The Audubon Society’s annual Christmas Bird Count—a volunteer population count of birds nationwide— documents a similar decline in laughing gull populations.

It would be far better if BP spent more of its time and energy investing in habitat restoration than claiming the job was finished, or contesting any report that fails to support its narrative.

Speak up for Gulf Wildlife

Four years after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, wildlife in the Gulf are still suffering.

]]>http://blog.nwf.org/2014/05/study-estimates-around-800000-birds-killed-during-bp-oil-spill/feed/1A Year After Mayflower Disaster, an Oil Spill at Every Turnhttp://blog.nwf.org/2014/04/a-year-after-mayflower-disaster-an-oil-spill-at-every-turn/
http://blog.nwf.org/2014/04/a-year-after-mayflower-disaster-an-oil-spill-at-every-turn/#commentsTue, 01 Apr 2014 19:40:38 +0000http://blog.nwf.org/?p=93681A year ago, residents of a quiet suburban neighborhood in Mayflower, Arkansas, watched in horror as heavy, toxic tar sands oil poured out of a burst pipeline, across their yards and into their street, covering everything in black muck and releasing noxious gases.

Mallard duck coated in oil, March 2013 (via Arkansas HAWK Center)

The spill made national news, and people around the country saw residents being escorted out of their homes with just a few belongings, and in many cases moving away. It would be appropriate to take a moment and commemorate the one-year anniversary of this devastating spill, and consider ways to move beyond a source of energy that causes such destruction.

Too bad we don’t have time for that. As a nation, we have been busy dealing with four oil spills in different states in just the past two weeks.

No matter the location of an oil spill, wildlife are killed or injured, people are exposed to chemicals and pushed from their homes, and water becomes too polluted for drinking or recreation. It takes months and years, even decades, to clean up.

And there is no time to dwell on the implications afterward – because by the time the birds are cleaned up, the cameras turned off, and people returned to their homes, it has happened again elsewhere. And the rest of us? Between news of the latest spill in one river or another, anniversaries of huge disasters like Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon, there are so many that we can’t even keep them straight.

It Could Happen in Vermont

One year after the Mayflower disaster, 25 years after Exxon Valdez, we still face another oil spill at every turn. That fact should prompt us to consider the aging pipeline that runs right through our backyard, cutting through the Northeast Kingdom between New Hampshire and Maine. The Exxon-owned company that operates the pipeline is clinging to the possibility of using it to transport toxic tar sands oil from Montreal to Portland. As the company releases carefully worded statements about safety in hopes of allaying any concerns over a project involving its half-century-old equipment, they beg us to ignore the most important and indisputable fact of all: Pipelines spill.

Pipelines spill in Texas. Pipelines spill in Michigan. Pipelines spill in Arkansas, they spill in Ohio. And, yes, they spill in Vermont. The biggest recorded spill from the Portland-Montreal pipeline in Vermont was years ago. Many have forgotten the day that people stood on the bridge in Coventry and peered down at oil coating the icy Black River, and watched as cleanup crews threw flaming kerosene-soaked hay bales in to try to burn off the oil. But it did happen. A spill today of the conventional crude currently being transported through the pipeline would be bad for communities from Jay to Sutton to Victory; if the pipeline carried tar sands crude instead, an incident could be devastating.

Looking down at the icy Black River in Coventry, Vt., January 2014 – in the spot where residents noticed oil slicks under the bridge after a 1952 spill. Photo: Annie Mackin

Vermonters understand the threat. The pipeline in Mayflower, Arkansas, was similar in age and size to the pipeline that runs through Vermont. 42 towns have already voted to show their opposition to the transport of tar sands crude through our state. Even without the similarities, the fact of pipelines remains the same: They spill, no matter where they are, and that’s the last thing Vermonters need to spend their time worrying about. We should be spending our time finding ways to move to cleaner sources of energy, instead of enabling further expansion of extreme fuels that pollute our nation’s waterways and wreck our climate.

Speak Out Against Oil Spills

]]>http://blog.nwf.org/2014/04/a-year-after-mayflower-disaster-an-oil-spill-at-every-turn/feed/1Dolphins Call Each Other Out by Their Nameshttp://blog.nwf.org/2013/07/dolphins-call-each-other-out-by-their-names/
http://blog.nwf.org/2013/07/dolphins-call-each-other-out-by-their-names/#commentsThu, 25 Jul 2013 18:20:31 +0000http://blog.nwf.org/?p=83435Although we don’t talk to dolphins, we are learning more about how they communicate with one another. A recent study released by the University of St. Andrews in Scotland gives evidence to the evolving theory that dolphins use unique whistles to identify each other and dolphins in the study responded to their own call played back to them. In essence, scientists say they can now call them out by their “names.”

Photo credit: flickr / thepugfather

The idea that dolphins use distinctive whistles to interact with one another has been building steam in recent years and scientists believe that these sounds are akin to how we humans use names to address each other. These findings, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, mark the first time researchers have studied this “name recognition” in dolphins.

By recording the unique whistles of a group of wild bottlenose dolphins and playing the audio back to the animals through underwater speakers, they observed that the individual dolphins only responded to their own unique whistles. The dolphins did so by echoing back their signature sound.

Living in an environment in which animals run along a dime by dozen, keeping a group together can be hard to handle so dolphins have had to develop unique ways of keeping in touch. Scientists believe this ability helps the dolphins stay in touch with their group as they travel long distances in the open ocean.

Dolphins’ natural curiosity and intelligence continues to surprise us as we learn more about these aquatic creatures. Unfortunately, dolphins continue to suffer as a result of anthropogenic (that’s right, human-caused) hazards.

So long, and thanks for all the… oil?

Many of us prefer to think of dolphins in Douglas Adams’ terms of happy, healthy, fish-eating friends, not sickly and dying animals whose waters have been spoiled and lives put in harm’s way. Dolphins should eat fish not oil, but the legacy we’re leaving them isn’t quite so simple and pristine. Dolphins may be amazing communicators, but despite their best efforts, they can’t speak up for themselves in our terms–they need our voices to inspire decision-makers to act in their best interest.

Even if you’re not a fan of the Black Crowes or Douglas Adams, you can appreciate that these creatures are utterly amazing and though they can call each other by their names, they need our voices to protect them and their ecosystems from our folly.

]]>http://blog.nwf.org/2013/07/dolphins-call-each-other-out-by-their-names/feed/5Of Sea Monsters and Menhttp://blog.nwf.org/2013/06/of-sea-monsters-and-men/
http://blog.nwf.org/2013/06/of-sea-monsters-and-men/#commentsThu, 13 Jun 2013 13:23:07 +0000http://blog.nwf.org/?p=81000A new video has hit the internet showing an extraordinary and rarely seen sea creature deep in the Gulf of Mexico.

The oarfish video originally recorded in 2011, was recently released in conjunction with an explanation of the creature which appeared in the June issue of the Journal of Fish Biology.

The Creature from the Abyss

Referred to as the “sea serpent,” the oarfish (Regalecus glesne) is an elusive serpentine fish that can grow up to 56 feet in length (the one captured in the video is about 8 feet long). It feeds mainly on krill and small crustaceans and lives in temperate to tropical oceans.

The oarfish is a creature which seems straight out of science fiction, with an eel-like iridescent elongated body and a lengthy dorsal fin that spans roughly half of its body. To add to its eerie otherworldliness it orients this long tubular body vertically in the water with its head facing upward.

Despite its size, the oarfish moves with great ease as it lithely undulates its dorsal fin like a propeller as it traverses the water. Normally a slow, stealthy swimmer, the oarfish has the ability to change direction in an instant when necessary.

The oarfish captured in this footage is about 8 feet long and is at a depth of about 200 feet below the surface of the water in the Gulf of Mexico. It was recorded by Louisiana State University marine biologist Mark Benfield with the help of a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). ROVs are commonly used for such deep-water exploration, but their availability to researchers is limited. Because oil offshore oil companies have their own ROVs which are easier to negotiate time to use them, Benfield has been working with oil companies in the Gulf on a project called GulfSERPENT. The project is part scanning the water for marine life and part of the on-going efforts to assess the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010.

The news of capturing such an elusive creature is certainly exciting and a boost to Benfield’s research, but it is also a sobering realization of what little we know about our planet’s ocean life and how we could be harming still undiscovered life, especially with an event like Deepwater Horizon; the effects of which we may not fully realize for years to come. In fact, the oarfish itself could be suffering from the die-off of microscopic organisms called foraminifera (a form of zooplankton) that resulted from the spill and which are a key food source for the very krill they rely on for sustenance.

]]>http://blog.nwf.org/2013/06/of-sea-monsters-and-men/feed/0Weekly News Roundup – April 19, 2013http://blog.nwf.org/2013/04/weekly-news-roundup-april-19-2013/
http://blog.nwf.org/2013/04/weekly-news-roundup-april-19-2013/#commentsFri, 19 Apr 2013 18:36:22 +0000http://blog.nwf.org/?p=78851Want to know what National Wildlife Federation was up to this week? Here is a recap of the week’s NWF news:

Three Years Later, Panhandle Leaders Say Gulf Restoration Could Be Economic Boon

April 18-On the eve of the three-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, five prominent Floridians called for investing money from the federal oil spill penalties into restoring the ecosystem of the Gulf Coast.

“Three years ago, Escambia County was threatened by the worst environmental disaster in US history,” said Grover Robinson, Escambia County commissioner and chair of Florida’s Gulf Consortium. “While we sustained damage to both our environment and economy, through both good fortune and hard work, we have cleaned up and visitors have returned to our beaches, hotels and restaurants. Still, restoration cannot fully occur until we implement the RESTORE Act which will provide a wonderful opportunity to repair those damages to the Gulf of Mexico region.”

April 18-Three years ago, on April 20, the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and killed 11 workers. Two days later, the rig sank. Before BP finally capped the well, months later, 206 million gallons of oil had been released along with huge quantities of hydrocarbon gases.

Larry Schweiger, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, said today:

“Nearly three years later, the impacts of the Gulf oil disaster continue to unfold. Dolphins and sea turtles are still dying in high numbers. Just this month scientists announced the spill’s underwater oil plume caused a massive die-off of creatures at the base of the Gulf’s food web. It’s clear that we will not know the full fallout from the disaster for years.

“BP needs to be held fully accountable. The outcome of the ongoing trial must send an unmistakable signal to every oil company that cutting corners on safety is simply not a smart thing to do.

]]>http://blog.nwf.org/2013/04/weekly-news-roundup-april-19-2013/feed/0East Coast Dolphins Would Get Sonic Migraine from Proposed Drillinghttp://blog.nwf.org/2012/04/east-coast-dolphins-would-get-sonic-migraine-from-proposed-drilling/
http://blog.nwf.org/2012/04/east-coast-dolphins-would-get-sonic-migraine-from-proposed-drilling/#commentsThu, 05 Apr 2012 20:20:03 +0000http://blog.nwf.org/?p=52440Last week, the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) took another step toward green lighting geological surveys for oil and gas drilling in the Mid- and South-Atlantic Ocean. With all the political backslapping over expanded drilling, few brought up that the excesses of the Deepwater Horizon calamity will now be heaped onto dolphins and other marine mammals on the Atlantic coast.

It’s a double whammy of trouble for them. First they’ll endure a barrage of painful and disruptive noise from the surveys, and should the oil platforms ever get built, their lives will be at risk daily from the inevitable spills. Two years after the BP Spill in the Gulf, have we failed to learn our lesson?

Blasts that Separate Mother and Calf

Baby dolphins, known as calves, will stay close to their mothers for up to 6 years. (Photo by J. D. Ebberly/Flickr)

Whales, dolphins and porpoises rely on underwater sound for survival. They rely on sound for predator avoidance, mate selection, mother-offspring bonding, foraging, navigation and communication. Sharp “shots” of sound can be very disruptive and can adversely change animals’ behavior. It can separate mother-calf pairs, for example. It can also cause “masking,” a term meaning the inability to detect important sounds because of increased background noise.

According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the cumulative noise of all sea-going vessels is an incessant drone of near-constant sound in a growing number of oceans regions. Seismic surveys, conducted during offshore oil and gas exploration, use rapid discharges of compressed air from air gun arrays. These send acoustic shock waves down through the water column that is reflected back from sub-sea rock strata. The blasts are emitted every 10 seconds and may be as loud as 250 decibels.

Other sources of acoustic pollution associated with offshore oil and gas activities include drilling, platform machinery, vessel traffic, low-flying aircraft and helicopters, and the movement of oil, gas or water through valves and under-sea pipelines. These intense sounds travel a long distance across the ocean. A 2009 workshop of experts, sponsored by Okeanos Foundation for the Sea, reported, “These surveys can last for months and the noise they produce is virtually ubiquitous in the world’s oceans.”

In the end, the most tragic thing may be the degrading of habitat. “Chronic ocean noise – the ubiquitous din of shipping and fishing vessels, seismic surveys, pile driving: all of it – slowly but surely degrades the quality of habitat available to acoustically sensitive species,” writes Dr. Rob Williams of Oceans Initiative. Unlike some of the more intractable threats facing aquatic life however, this one is very solvable he writes. We need to cut the noise, and that means turning down the volume on the underwater heavy metal concert, not turning it up.

Sick Dolphins Reported in Gulf

Dolphins are social and intelligent animals who live in large groups called pods. Here is a dolphin dance, off of Kona Coast, Hawaii. (Photo by SteveD/Flickr)

Surveys will be just the start of their headache. When something goes wrong and the inevitable spill happens, many will die immediately, but the after effects could stay for years. As NWF noted recently, dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico dolphins are suffering a mighty hangover from the BP spill. Many are in poor health because of exposure to polluted water.

These dolphins have a low body weight, anemia, low blood sugar and symptoms of liver and lung disease. It is so serious that the fisheries arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared an “unusual mortality event” for cetaceans (whales and dolphins) in the northern Gulf of Mexico from February 2010 to the present.

As of March 25, there were 706 cetacean “strandings” or beaching events of which five percent stranded alive and 95 percent stranded dead. Repeat: 95 percent dead. Even in the aftermath of the BP/Deepwater Horizon spill, we need to remind the oil and gas industry and its backers that seismic surveys and oil drilling can have huge consequences. After the BP spill, NWF Senior Scientist Doug Inkley said, “The Gulf oil disaster is to marine life what smoking is to humans – it could kill you, and if it doesn’t your general health suffers.”

We are still living with the legacy of the BP spill. In fact, some of the results are just emerging. Let’s not have a Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Atlantic.

Part of the sticky tar mat found on a beach near where a colony of pelicans nest. Photo by Maura Wood

It seemed odd to be heading out of the Myrtle Grove Marina on a beautiful day looking for oil. The Deepwater Horizon well was capped over a year ago. BP is trying to wrap up their clean-up operations, tell us it’s all clear, and hightail it out of here. So it’s over, right?

No, it’s not over. What we saw in Louisiana’s Bay Jimmy and Barataria Bay was deeply disappointing. The oil is still there, and the impacts of the oil are evident.

We stopped first in Bay Jimmy at the marshes that took the worst oil hits. Last summer, these areas were repeatedly inundated by oil. Clean up crews determined that oil-soaked marsh grass had formed such a hard cap over the soil that sunlight and microbes couldn’t penetrate to remediate, so they had recommended “marsh raking.” By scraping the dead vegetation and oil cap off the surface of the marsh, they hoped to allow natural remediation and plant regrowth to take over.

For me, seeing these marshes is a step back in time. They appear as oil-soaked and damaged as they did a year ago. Clearly a great deal of material was removed, and the next growing season will tell the story of whether “marsh raking” is a success. But viewing the lifeless marsh edge from the boat, with propane cannons booming to scare birds from the oily surface, was sobering and saddening.

We proceeded to Cat Island, where a colony of breeding pelicans was in full fledge when the oil hit last summer. Earlier this year, we had noted nesting proceeding as usual. Now, in September, the island was eerily deserted, nesting duties completed. The absence of birds made the condition of the mangrove canopy of the island all the more visible – the mangroves were dead or dying. When we first approached this island last year preoil, it was green, covered with a canopy of black mangrove on which the pelicans were nesting.

Photo by Maura Wood

Now, only small patches were green, and the remainder were brown lifeless sticks. Did the oil kill the mangroves? We haven’t seen data to show that is the cause. But having seen it cover the island for months during the previous year, we couldn’t help but think it certainly might be implicated. In any case, restoring thriving and healthy nesting sites for pelicans and the other water birds that share their rookeries will be an important element of repairing the damage from the oil spill.

Finally, we waded ashore on the front beach of the nearest barrier island to check it out. Tropical Storm Lee had recently come through, stirring the sand with surge and waves. Sure enough, we quickly discovered a large tar mat that had been exposed, a sticky and smelly layer that extended far down the beach.

So the oil is not gone. Barataria Bay is beautiful, but problems remain. Restoration is imperative, and funding must be dedicated to ensure a healthy and thriving Gulf.

A 16-month federal investigation has concluded that BP’s efforts to limit costs on its mile-deep Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico contributed to the disastrous blowout last year that killed 11 workers and sunk the giant rig Deepwater Horizon.

“BP’s cost or time saving decisions without considering contingencies and mitigation were contributing causes of the Macondo blowout,” states the long-awaited report by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.

The report, based on months of hearings and testimony from rig workers and engineers, skewers BP for dozens of mistakes and a failure to appreciate the risks of drilling and then temporarily abandoning the Macondo well.

[I]nterviews and documents obtained by The Associated Press show a BP scientist identified a previously unreported deposit of flammable gas that could have played a role in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, but the oil giant failed to divulge the finding to government investigators for as long as a year.

While engineering experts differ on the extent to which the two-foot-wide swath of gas-bearing sands helped cause the disaster, the finding raises the specter of further legal and financial troubles for BP. It also could raise the stakes in the multibillion-dollar court battle between the companies involved.

“This report confirms what we knew from the first days of the oil disaster when BP was pushing a deliberately and absurdly low estimate of the gusher’s size – that BP has put its own legal liability before the Gulf’s people and wildlife,” said Larry Schweiger, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation. “It also demonstrates that Congress must pass comprehensive restoration legislation to make sure BP’s fines and penalties are dedicated to making the Gulf whole.”

Congress has yet to pass any legislation responding to the worst oil disaster in American history:

Sea turtle swims through oily gulf waters, May 2010

Not to make offshore oil drilling safer

Not to raise the liability caps to ensure that oil companies are held accountable for their mistakes

Not to ensure that we restore the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River Delta that were so severely impacted by this disaster.

Take Action

]]>http://blog.nwf.org/2011/09/bps-negligence-contributing-cause-of-gulf-oil-disaster/feed/0Somebody Stop Me Before I Spill Again!http://blog.nwf.org/2011/08/somebody-stop-me-before-i-spill-again/
http://blog.nwf.org/2011/08/somebody-stop-me-before-i-spill-again/#commentsMon, 15 Aug 2011 16:07:48 +0000http://blog.nwf.org/wildlifepromise/?p=29472Last week we wrote about the danger posed by Shell’s plans to drill in the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska. Well, now comes the “told you so” moment. From the Associated Press:

The British government warned Monday that several hundred tons of oil may have leaked into the North Sea from a Royal Dutch Shell rig.

The Department for Energy and Climate Change said it estimates that the leak from a flow line at the Gannet Alpha platform off the Scottish coast that began last week could have spilled several hundred tons of oil into the sea.

An oil rig in the North Sea (photo: flickr/Tuftronic10000)

By all accounts this isn’t another Deepwater Horizon, and (thankfully) it didn’t happen in rough winter conditions, but it illustrates just how dishonest the oil companies are about their ability to protect our oceans and marine wildlife. Several hundred tons of oil is not a dribble—it’s a lot of fuel, enough to create a slick 20 miles long. And it’s at least the 11th reported incident at the platform since 2009, for an industry that notoriously under-reports its spills.

But go ahead, Shell, insist that this is just another “isolated incident” or a “minor accident” or whatever it is your PR folks cook up to let you sleep at night. I guess it doesn’t matter when you’re making billions in profits and have Congress on speed dial.

As for the rest of us, isn’t it time to stop trusting these people? How many more spills will it take to realize that we’re being lied to by an industry that isn’t accountable to anyone? If Shell has its way, next summer they’ll be punching holes in the ocean floor north of Alaska, home to walrus, bowhead and beluga whales, polar bears and other iconic species.

]]>http://blog.nwf.org/2011/08/somebody-stop-me-before-i-spill-again/feed/0Shell Moves Us One Step Closer to an Arctic Tragedyhttp://blog.nwf.org/2011/08/shell-moves-us-one-step-closer-to-an-arctic-tragedy/
http://blog.nwf.org/2011/08/shell-moves-us-one-step-closer-to-an-arctic-tragedy/#commentsWed, 10 Aug 2011 20:48:18 +0000http://blog.nwf.org/wildlifepromise/?p=29237The Arctic Ocean is one of the globe’s last wildernesses: often dark, always frigid, and prone to violent storms and drifting ice sheets that make navigation next to impossible. But despite all of these problems the Obama Administration just gave the green light to Shell Oil’s Arctic drilling exploration plan, proving once again that oil companies are held to a different standard than everyone else.

In a statement BOEMRE (the offshore regulatory agency) said that they “found no evidence that the proposed action would significantly affect the quality of the human environment.” The final outcome is contingent on a few more approvals – for safety permits and other things – but most observers believe the point is clear: the government wants drilling to happen and is working hard to make that a reality.

So what’s the big deal? A lot of folks have pointed out the obvious: there’s no way Shell or any other company could control a blowout or clean up an oil spill in these conditions. They don’t (and won’t) have icebreaker ships to get to a spill. The skimmer ships and absorbent boom that BP used in the Gulf of Mexico were heartbreakingly useless, but even these measures wouldn’t work in the Arctic.

The Canadian Coast Guard ship Amundsen on an ice floe in the Beaufort Sea (photo: flickr/indigo-)

But don’t take it from me. According to US Coast Guard Commandant Robert Papp:

“If the company fails, if the response plan fails, the federal government must in some way be able to back it up with some resources. We had plenty of resources, from bases to communication systems to helicopters, in the Gulf of Mexico. And if this were to happen off the North Slope of Alaska, we’d have nothing.”

And for all of their assurances that we’ve come a long way since the Deepwater Horizon, BOEMRE still doesn’t do real-world testing of safety equipment (including blow-out preventers and capping stacks) for drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico. So it’s ludicrous to think that they’ll do real-world testing in the Arctic, where there’s no response infrastructure in place.

Computer simulations and warehouse tests don’t cut it. Not to get cute but the only way to know if you can control a blowout in the freezing, icy, howling midnight is to, well, test equipment in freezing, icy, howling midnight.

Even so, Shell is claiming they will recover 90% of any oil that spills. Funny thing is, BP only recovered 3% of the Deepwater Horizon oil and Exxon’s Valdez cleanup only accounted for 9%. It would be a triumph of epic proportions to recover even 10 or 15% of a possible Arctic spill. The reality is that Shell is lying, and the government seems to be fine with that.